How to Motivate Staff in the Workplace - overcoming depression, anxiety, and procrastination

Motivating staff can be hard work. People are complicated - we don't all respond the same way. Motivational seminars can be a breath of fresh air, they are usually inspirational and entertaining, but the real value to your organisation is measured in the degree of impact that the motivating experience has on the participants over time. 

The question is: Did your staff engage with that feeling of self-motivation deeply enough for it to become a habit?

Work sheets are essential - goal setting templates, personal affirmations, understanding the power of the mind and positive thinking - but words written on paper, even powerful words, lose their power unless they are kept alive by constant practice and repetition.

A detailed recipe is the crucial first step in the process that creates what you want, but events do not always flow in a strait line between writing down the recipe from the internet, and enjoying the perfect red velvet cupcake. Anxiety, depression, and procrastination in your place of work can be such a powerful combination, that even the notes from an inspiring seminar can seem pointless or confusing.

Depression is the most common psycho-emotional problem in the workplace, and yet a full cure can not be claimed by any of our extremely complicated, expensive psychiatric drugs. In fact, the full cure for depression can only be found in a personal decision to make certain lifestyle improvements, followed by a daily program for reminding yourself what you are doing, and why you are doing it. In 9 years of practice as a Hypnotherapist I have seen over 100 cases of depression transformed, using this method. You must make the decision to improve yourself, and you must follow a daily program to stay positive. 

The secret strategy to overcoming depression, is in knowing what you want, and then taking small, constant steps to get there. Short term goals are rewarding when you achieve them, and provide natural encouragement for you to continue to the next short term goal. The feeling of achievement is due to the natural release of dopamine into the blood stream from the central nervous system, and this hormone causes the opposite "feeling" from depression. So the "cure for depression" is really about what you do.

Procrastination is usually caused by the feeling of being ill-equipped to handle the task at hand. Not knowing what to do, self doubt, fear, or doubting your process, creates overload in your mind, too many thoughts, anxiety, and indecision. A task that should take a few hours, can take weeks, or just never happen. The opposite of procrastination is feeling confident, knowing what to do, having the skill and equipment to accomplish the task, and finding decisions easy to make, and obvious. 

How can you motivate your staff to become more confident, knowledgeable, skilled, and decisive? 

Full article: How to Motivate Staff in the Workplace - overcoming depression, anxiety, and procrastination

NBSR Employee Engagement Training

Recovering From Abandonment - when Love runs out of Time

Have you ever noticed how, in every instance of abandonment, there is always a hidden clock? 

Somewhere in there is a loop counter - a silent fuse, a secret measurement of the number of attempts you have - unknown to you until the termination of your relationship, which, unless the dynamics changed, would inevitably self-destruct after a certain time had passed.

Parent, child, relationship partner, business partner, teacher, student ... anyone you care about who walks away from you can make you feel abandoned or unwanted. 

To understand why people walk out on us, we can turn the tables, and ask: what would make you abandon someone who you feel is getting too heavy? What do you do when you feel that your happiness or survival is being threatened by someone who is slowing you down?

You may try to communicate the problem, being pro-active, assertive, but if that does'nt work, then what? You try again, or try something different, but subconsciously the loop counter begins, because you don't want anyone to take advantage of your good nature. Subconsciously, you record the number of attempts, because if this situation does not change, you will have to abandon the sinking (relation)ship, or go down with it. With each failed attempt at solving the problem, your disappointment accumulates, you begin to feel like you're wasting your time, your patience wears thin, and then one day, Love runs out of Time.

Where physical separation is inconvenient or impossible, we detach emotionally, living in the same house, but leading parallel lives.

The abandonment complex is often buried deep beneath the surface of our awareness, sometimes completely covered by emotions like depression, anger, or anxiety, or obsessions such as shopping, sex, or substance abuse. When a relationship ends, and we feel grief and loss, the reason for the depth of that emotional hurt, is the primordial fear of abandonment, which goes back way beyond childhood, its encoded on a genetic level.

For social animals like primates, being abandoned means having to fend for ourselves, which is a significant survival risk. Even the most recluse, independent individuals must rely on others for their income and survival. For humans, abandonment is one of our primordial, deepest fears.

The 10 Million Dollar Question Is - What Can We Do About It?

To come back to primates, lets say that a little monkey in a big rain forest is abandoned, not necessarily because the other monkeys don't like him, maybe the others were eaten by tigers, but he has to come up with a survival plan: Where is the food? Where are the other monkeys? He journeys across the forest to look for food and the safety of companionship, and if he sticks to that strategy he will succeed. Any time he digresses from the plan, he can so easily become lost, wondering, desperate. As long as he's focussed on his goal, there is simply no time to be depressed. Anxiety or depression comes when he is sitting procrastinating in a tree, then he feels lonely, worrying, becoming more anxious and depressed because he's not getting any closer to his goal.

The truth is that sometimes, we need to do things on our own because there is no-one around to help. Anyone who finds it easy to change a tyre on the highway will tell you that its actually not that difficult, 10 minutes and you're back on the road. But what if it happens in a dangerous area? What we don't have a lot of physical strength? How do we become strong and independent? How do we know what to do? How can we connect our desires with a strategy and a plan of action?

When I am faced with a life challenges, a fresh perspective always clarifies what I need to do, and often reveals a few options that I would otherwise have overlooked. If I were the monkey, the first thing I would do is climb to the top of a tree, and get a good view of where I am... where I would like to be... and the shortest, safest possible rout for me to get there. 

This will seem counter-intuitive to people who are anxious to start their journey and not waste any time, and it will seem difficult to people who don't know what to do, and frequently experience a catatonic sate (moments of being unable to move, just staring). For this reason I compiled a workshop in 2010 called "Getting Back On Your Feet - How to recover from grief and loss of love" - in which the metaphor of climbing a tree to get a better perspective of the forest, is applied to your real life situation. We look at all your options, and identify any unconscious behaviour that is stopping you from pursuing a more direct path to your goal - or even stopping you from seeing what your goal really is - and then we set out an instruction manual for your specific rout, to reach your goal. Finally, To help you put your plan into action, we'll look at how powerful your thoughts are in creating your mood, and develop a personal affirmation for you, that works with your individual suggestibility. This is one of my most frequently requested workshops because it helps with both sides of the coin - gives you motivation when you feel down, and relaxation when you feel stressed. 

Getting Back On Your Feet - How to recover from grief and loss of love

Workshop Synopsis:

• What Do I Really Want?
• Passion, Logic, and Goals
• How To Climb Up, One Step At A Time
• When Last Did I Relax?
• Knowing My Mind
• Choosing My Thoughts

Duration: 2 hours
Cost: R200 (includes printed notes)
Venue: The Soul Sanctuary 124 Florida Road, 
Time: 5pm, Oct 23
Bookings: 079 567 4261

The method is based on actual survival skills, which can always be applied to psychological scenarios. You will come out of this workshop with your own complete set of instructions and personal motivation material, which not only lets you navigate through your current life challenge, but also has you coming out exactly where you want to be.

The ancient Myans believed that time was divided into day and night, not only physically, but also psychologically. "Day" was a time for extroversion, when outer progress could be made in life, where as "Night" was a time for inner work, healing, planning, studying, preparing for the next "Day". Its ok if you are going through a "Night" time, and if that has been a few months or even years, then that is how long you have needed. But if you are ready now to reclaim your life and your goals, and recover from your grief and loss of love, then this is the time for you to move on. The opportunity is here.

To book now call 079 567 4261

or email info@nbsr.co.za

Meditation and Motivation for Anxiety and Depression

Take a deeeep breath...
And let it ouuuut.

Can you imagine being told anything more infuriating when you are feeling anxious?

Hold my breath??? Are you TRYING to give me a heart attack?? I'd like to see YOU relax and take a deep breath when YOUR chest feels like its about to explode!

Depression is'nt any easier. Picture a football coach giving his best "Go Get Em" prep talk to a sofa inhabited by a droopy figure who feels like a ghost, and you have a pretty good idea.

Pills work, we like pills. They're easy, you don't have to take any more responsibility than remembering to take them, they're socially acceptable, and they were prescribed (one hopes) by "The Doctor".

What could possibly be wrong?

For readers familiar with the chain of events that occurs when using pharmaceuticals, the irony is clear:

Pills have side effects.

Sleeping may seem unimportant to you during a time of pressure and head spinning panic attacks or debilitating depression, but in retrospect, William Dement's well known insomnia research in the 1960s may seem startlingly resonant. Dement showed that prolonged lack of sleep causes both anxiety and depression.

Other side effects meander across a vast field of dysfunctional behaviour, and yet, this is what we do. The more varying the side effects, the more pills are required to bring your deliriously confused body back to "NORMAL". Its like the song about the old lady who swallowed a fly: "She swallowed a spider to catch the fly, she swallowed a bird to catch the spider, she swallowed a cat to catch the bird, she swallowed a dog to catch the cat, she swallowed a horse to catch the dog...

Is this normal? Is this sane? Really?

We can understand the cause of anxiety and depression very simply, by identifying what is missing. If you have anxiety, relaxation is missing. If you have depression, motivation is missing.

Within these two over-simplified statements, there exists enough complexity to spend several years talking to a therapist, quantifying which event in the past caused each repercussion in the present. Let's assume you spent 18 months working it all out. Where would you be? Exactly where you are now with one major change: you can now tell your story, your history, your past. Do you have the peace of mind that you started out searching for? Have you achieved your most accessible life goal?

This myth: "The key to your future is understanding your past" is the reason for so much stagnation, suffering, and entrapment. How can you see where you are going by looking backwards??! Does'nt that seem a little, well, backward?

When is it time to leave pseudo-profound anonymous sayings in the Pick n' Pay diaries where we found them, and listen to real people who are actually doing what we want to do, and living the lives that we want to live? There are people who are doing this right now.

Every author of a "How To Be Brilliant And Successful Like Me" book has one thing in common: they left their past in the past, let bygones be bygones, planned the goal they wanted, and went after it with every spanner they had!

It is my reward to present to you:

Meditation and Motivation for

Anxiety and Depression

The 1 Hour Workshop

Workshop Outline:

Motivation For Depression

• What Do You Really Want?
• Passion, Logic, and Goals
• How To Climb Up, One Step At A Time

Meditation for Anxiety

• When Last Did You Relax?
• Knowing Your Mind
• Choosing Your Thoughts

Duration: 1 hour
Cost: R100 (includes printed notes)
Full details and bookings: www.nbsr.co.za/events
NBSR treatment concessions for workshop attendees: www.nbsr.co.za/guarantee

Anxiety and depression may seem like polar opposites, but they are actually two sides of the same coin. One is very rarely present without the other. You do not have to be officially diagnosed to suffer with anxiety or depression, its just a feeling of being outdone, defeated, disappointed, wanting more out of life, or feeling that your goals are out of reach, or that sometimes things seem a little overwhelming and you feel like you want to get off the carousel, or you feel you need a vacation shortly after returning from one.

After studying human behaviour for many years, and becoming an International Hypnotherapist and Stress Consultant, I founded Neuro-Behavioural Sound Reprogramming in 2005, to address behavioural problems and life challenges holistically. NBSR uses a combination of therapeutic techniques including behavioural analysis, hypnotherapy, and common sense, to transform your challenge into a spiritual, emotional, and physical goal attainment.

I look forward to sharing this dynamic and thorough system of personal transformation and self-empowerment with you. Feel free to brows the testimonials on the website, and get an idea about what I do, or you can email me directly at www.nbsr.co.za/contact
Andrew Wilding